


Love Like Salt

by kalliel



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Case Fic, Child Neglect, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Episode Related, Episode: s09e07 Bad Boys, Family Drama, Family Dynamics, Gen, Haunted Houses, Hurt Sam Winchester, Hurt/Comfort, Pre-Series, SPN 9x07, Season/Series 09, Sick Dean Winchester, ambiguous response to environments of sustained emotional abuse/neglect, but also a horror story, humorous farce
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-25
Updated: 2013-11-25
Packaged: 2018-01-02 15:27:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,344
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1058432
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kalliel/pseuds/kalliel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Winchesters revisit a ghostly snag in one of John's old cases.  Meanwhile, Sam scrambles to mend their broken pieces, even as his world unravels around him.  Dean just unravels. Takes place after 9x07.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [i-speak-tongue](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=i-speak-tongue).



> Originally inspired by **i_speak_tongue** 's [prompt](http://hoodie-time.livejournal.com/846785.html?thread=11557569#t11557569) at the **hoodie_time** comment!meme on LJ, but then Sam, uh, took over. As he does.

"Were you gonna kiss her like that?" It was the first time, at least as far as Sam could remember, John had ever talked about someone their age, someone a friend of theirs but not of John's. Someone who was not a hunter. It annoyed Sam that she was just as much a stranger to him. This mystery girl of Dean's.

When they'd left New York, Dean had climbed into the back seat of the Impala with him, unthinking. It had been years since they'd shared the back, and Dean eyed the fighter jet in his lap derisively, like _Seriously, Sam?_ , but still, it was nice. Sam wasn't sure if they should hug, or what, but he guessed not. And anyway, John would be back soon, and that would be that.

"Uncle Bobby sent me to Veronica's," Sam had explained, hefting the plane into the air as though it could fly over the two months that stood between them now. He offered it to Dean, who slid it tentatively under the driver's seat, fingers dancing away from the body of it like it was on fire.

"Not her again." Dean grimaced.

Dean was wearing a tie and a button-up shirt. His hair was brushed.

"Dean--" Sam started.

"Babysitters with dead kids--bad fucking mojo, Sammy. I thought you told Dad Veronica wasn't a good idea."

But John hadn't been there. He'd disappeared. "It was Uncle _Bobby_ who--"

Then John came back around the Impala. With a steel creak and a rumble of mechanical parts, they backed away from New York without another word. Sam resumed his slump against the car door; the conversation hadn't gone anywhere near the way he'd wanted it to, anyway. Across the car and a world away, Dean picked at his nails, and sneezed.

He switched to shotgun at the gas station outside of Harrisburg. Sam tried to convince himself that it was only normal--it was--but it felt empty. In Milford, John counted out a few grease-creased bills onto the dash, weighed down by a menagerie of loose change. When Dean came back with the gas receipt, he returned also with a fistful of fluttering brown napkins. He was wearing a different shirt.

That's when John asked, "Were you gonna kiss her like that?" 

He'd waited until after Dean blew his nose, wiped roughly. He didn't sound like he was actually seeking an answer, in that brooks-no-argument John Winchester way of his. Instead, it was the way he asked things like, _Were you gonna leave that door unlocked?_ or _It's gonna be a long night; were you_ planning _to leave behind that extra clip?_ It was a way of making sure no Winchester made any novice mistakes. It was also a way, Sam had begun to suspect, of making missed opportunities sound like mistakes best avoided. ( _League seasons are long, Sam. Are you sure you'd want to let a team down when we need to leave, and suddenly they're down a man?_ )

Good riddance to this girl, and kissing anyone, Sam figured, but still, it wasn't fair.

"Not like it's mono," Dean muttered, and blew his nose again. His neck stiffened when he realized his mistake ( _Are you sure you wanna mouth off to me?_ ), and he balled the now gummy napkin up in the palm of his hand, like a grenade.

"The kids at John Harris keep asking why I disappear, and then come back all the time," Sam blurted, deflecting. "They say it's weird."

"Well, Singer's solved that one for you, Sam," John snapped, turning the key in the ignition with little patience and less affection. "Congratulations."

"It's not full," Dean pointed out, yanking John's attention back to the front seat. He cocked his head toward the dashboard as it lit up, and the dials resumed their stations. The gas gauge lingered at just under half a tank. 

That was wrong. It should be full; John always filled to full.

But no answer was forthcoming. As the Impala kicked up speed for the onramp, the question evaporated out like so much exhaust. John lurched them back onto the highway, southbound. A housekeeper had died in Virginia Beach; her heart had frozen. The Winchesters were going.

 

_Were you really gonna question that?_

 

\--

 

It was after midnight when they pulled up in front of the job--an old plantation expanse that had dropped its quaint, historical charm in favor of Spanish Revival. The mansion sprawled outward rather than upward, putting it decades (and timezones) apart from the rest of the houses they'd seen on the way in. The walls were whitewashed stucco, the roof tiled and red. The front door was dwarfed by the parapet gable that sat above it, like a hat. Sam thought it made the house look too much like a church, and nothing like Virginia Beach. All the lights were still on, though, and after a groggy tumble from the Impala and across a stray snatch of lawn, Sam was blinking tearily at a series of morose portraits lining the front entryway. The walls were bright and the lights blinding; strange fronds clustered in the corners of the hall, and Sam swore he could hear birds. It may as well have been noon in there--as though the house were determined not to be haunted.

Dean sneezed in earnest, snorking wetly into his fist of napkin, and Sam scuttled discreetly toward the opposite wall. The last thing he wanted tonight was to share in that.

"You're later than I hoped," noted Hector Felipe, the man of the house, after he'd introduced himself to Sam and Dean as such. He said nothing to John. "But my girls flew in from their mother's this afternoon; it still feels like evening to them. We were about to sit down to supper."

Hector Felipe was...broad, was really the only reliable adjective Sam could think of. He introduced the portraits on the wall with great flourishes of his arms, which made him seem even broader. As if in grudging admission of John's existence, finally, he turned around to make sure John was looking. Then he spoke: "These are they--Andalusia, the oldest. Liliana, who turned fourteen last month. There's Marina, and Luz. Surely you remember little Luz, Mr. Winchester."

The three eldest were in pink, and tiny Luz in white. Other than that, all the portraits looked like taller or fatter versions of each other, to a degree that made Sam glad he and Dean didn't look anything alike. But then, from the back, his father and Hector Felipe were starting to look too much like as well, so maybe it was the hallway. They were both tall and dark, except Hector Felipe was in a suit, John in leather. They moved strangely in each other's orbits, all misplaced gravity and static cling.

"Surely you'll join us," said Hector Felipe, of dinner. In the interim, he'd explained something about the house, and something about John's familiarity with it, which Sam had mostly zoned out, but he perked up at the mention of food. The grilled cheese at Veronica's had been a long time ago, and from New York down, John hadn't even given them loose change for some chips, or a Slim Jim or something to split.

"We're only here to work," John returned, to Sam's complete dismay. "We have places to be."

Sam almost blurted out, no, they really didn't, but Hector Felipe beat him: "But I insist. I can provide, Mr. Winchester, with plenty to spare." If there was a certain predatory haughtiness to the invitation, it's not like Sam hadn't been forced into dinners that had required him to endure significantly worse. He'd spent two weeks of dinners, and lunches, and breakfasts, after all, with Veronica staring at him like he was some kind of ghost. He'd known his presence only in all the little ways she told him it was not her Timicito's.

"I can provide for my children," Hector Felipe repeated. "Let me make it up to yours."

Gravity warped. And John, jaw tight and lips soured, acquiesced. 

Sam breathed a sigh of relief. Beside him, Dean, under his breath: "God exists. There's a God."

Warmed by Dean's unexpected confidence, Sam grinned. They fell into step with one another, tromping down the hallway behind their father and Hector Felipe. Reaching across two months of lost time, Sam asked, "What, they didn't feed you in New York?"

Equally unexpectedly, Dean bristled. "It's over, Sam." An imperceptible shift in gait, and Dean began to outpace him.

Sam skipped to keep up. "Wait, Dean. When I was at Uncle Bobby's-- The reason he sent me to Veronica-- He said we couldn't come over any more."

"What the hell did you do?"

"Nothing! It was Dad, Uncle Bobby said Dad couldn't just--" Sam checked his volume and continued at a whisper. "He said Dad needed to think about whether--"

"I said it was over, Sam. There's nothing to talk about."

Sam kicked the back of Dean's ankle, just enough to trip him up. "Dean, listen, I think--"

"It's over, Sam--I got dumped, you got dumped, and then you got dumped again. And then Veronica gave you a dead kid's toy. The end."

"That's not the whole story, that's not--"

"OVER," Dean hissed.

"You don't know the whole story." Sam stayed firm. "I heard them shouting at each other on Veronica's second line. Uncle Bobby said--"

Dean yanked Sam in front of him. "No one needs to know the whole story." Sam squirmed; Dean's grip on his arm hurt. "We already know how it ends. So just fucking--" 

Dean bit his tongue, and let Sam go. "We're working," he said, in a voice that was tired and flattened in ways that reminded Sam of his father, not his brother. "So just--shut up for a few hours. I don't know. Just--" 

Dean sneezed. Then he sneezed twice more, in quick succession. He leaned into the air, as though he were expecting the wall to be closer, and the extra impact when his shoulder finally found it hitched in his breath.

Sam stopped massaging his arm and put a cold hand to Dean's neck. It felt hot. "Are you all right?"

Dean uttered a nameless, jagged syllable. "It's whatever. It's just--"

Their momentary tardiness had not gone unnoticed. From the dining hall ahead, Sam heard Hector Felipe, and not their father, calling them.

"It's been a long day. Let's just do the job, and go home."

 

Go home where? Sam did not ask.

 

\--

 

But it was hard to stay specifically angry at Dean when there were so many other people in the room. Hector Felipe sat at the head of the table, Andalusia beside him, followed by Liliana, and then Marina, like nesting dolls. Then John, and then Dean. Sam sat across from Dean on the empty side of the table, and Luz invited herself to the seat just left of him. She was wearing the same dress from her portrait.

"It's for parties," she told Sam, very solemnly.

Sam looked at John, and put his napkin in his lap. Dean copied Sam. Hector Felipe had tucked his into the collar of his dress shirt. Sam wasn't sure about the girls; maybe they didn't need napkins. They were, after all, girls. Luz just wiped her hands on Sam's.

Dinner was a lavish affair that involved salads spicy with onion; yellow rice; steaming bowls of sauce, the separate uses for which Sam could not distinguish. Meat that slipped from the bone when Sam even thought about prodding it with the wrong fork.

("You're using the wrong fork," chided Luz, which made Sam bristle, because she was like, four. "That's the salad fork.")

Then she drew a heart in the juices of his steak strips and sucked the brown, savory dribble from her fingers. She took a bite of his orange slice.

Angrily, Sam scribbled out her heart and mashed the rest of the orange into his mouth. He stared daggers at Dean until he looked up.

Dean turned a palm upward. _What?_

Sam made a face, and jerked his head toward Luz. He thought rich people were supposed to have manners, but no one was saying a damn thing about this. There was the usual buzz of old people talking, mostly Hector Felipe, and John, if he had to. Andalusia, who seemed like a regular queen, detailed the Houston airport; Liliana, their plans for the coming months. She seemed like she wanted to act older than she actually came across, by Sam's estimation. She also had a habit of addressing Sam directly from time to time--"And what do you think about that, Sam?"--which was at once too familiar and too formal. Sam nodded and mumbled until he mumbled himself into an opportunity for escape. Marina was Sam's age, and her mouth was perpetually full, in order to avoid exactly the same fate. 

Luz climbed under Sam's elbow and flicked her tongue at his sweet corn, before disappearing under the table and panting like an excited puppy.

Sam made another face at Dean, more pained than the first. Tortured, even.

Dean just shook his head. His brow furrowed in confusion.

Sam's eyes widened, and he pursed his lips, like, _This is bullshit, don't you think so?_

Further confusion. Then Dean slumped a little, and wiped at his face with the back of his hand. He kneaded his temple, and dabbed at his nose with the cloth napkin as discreetly as possible.

Then Luz leaned across Sam's plate and poked holes, one two three, into the taut crust of his bread roll.

Sam let his fork drop to his plate with a clatter, and Dean looked up.

Sam gave him his best impression of a perturbed gargoyle--a gargoyle perturbed by a snotty little princess.

Dean rolled his eyes. _You are such a fucking moron, Sam._

If Sam were psychic, he'd have retaliated. _What part of the English language don't you understand, Dean? All of it?_ Because holy crap. If Sam were psychic, life would just be easier, period. How much did he have to pay to get someone to treat him like an actual person, seriously.

Before Sam was finished seething, Dean sneezed again--and again and again, triple-tap.

"I can give you something for that, you know," said Hector Felipe.

"No, you can't," John objected immediately.

"Mr. Winchester." Hector Felipe took his napkin out of his collar and folded it on top of his plate. "You don't supply the best hospitals on the continent with their prescription medications, and fund the research of seventeen others, without learning a few tricks. You don't make a business out of saving people without, well." Hector Felipe smiled. "Saving them. I have a medical license; I think I'm qualified to give your son a simple decongestant."

Show off, Sam thought. Hector Felipe didn't need to tell anyone all of that. John had taught him and Dean better.

He had.

"Certainly, he can't be expected to hunt a ghost like that," Hector Felipe continued. "There's a guest bedroom down the hall. You could make it up for him."

"He's good for the job."

Between the dinner and the disaster that had been his two months with Uncle Bobby (and Veronica), Sam had almost forgotten they were even on a job. But there was a ghost, wasn't there. There was a ghost haunting this regal, shadowless house; somewhere inside, a housekeeper had died of a frozen heart. And John wanted all three of them on the case; that was the whole reason he'd even shown up again, magically summoned from the ether. He'd wanted them for the job. So of course he wanted Dean to be good for it, whatever that meant, but even Sam knew that was obviously not the case; and his father needed to fold, for once in his life. A flare of anger shot through Sam's chest, anger at John's blindness, his stubbornness, his hardness--but that wasn't it, was it.

Veronica had called him. Veronica had given John the case. She'd wanted Sam to stay, to stay "safe" with her, and John had rescued him.

"Fine," John said, and folded. Something inside Sam twisted wrong. Because no, that wasn't right. That wasn't his father; not Dad.

Dean looked...relieved? And that was wrong, too. There was, Sam knew, something seriously wrong with all of this. It was wrong. He didn't know why, but something was off, something wasn't meshing right, there were gears grinding, there were cues being missed. It had been two months, and somehow they'd all come back wrong. This was all--

When Hector Felipe suggested again that John take the bedding to the guest room--since after all, the housekeeper was dead now, wasn't she--and John seemed poised to accept, Sam shouted. He wasn't sure what he shouted, but both Dean and Liliana shouted "Sam!" in return.

Then they looked at each other. Dean grinned, and winked at her.

And Sam knew that look. He remembered that look. That was not a good look.

"God, Papi, I'll do the bed," said Andalusia. "Having guests make up their own rooms; what are you thinking? They're guests, aren't they?" This last, she said with her eyebrows raised, timbre pointedly interrogative.

Hector Felipe glowered, feral, then recovered himself. "Of course," he said.

It was the house; it had to be the house. Or the ghost. Or maybe it was them; maybe it was the Winchester curse, mucking everything up. Whatever it was, there was something very definitely wrong here, even if Sam was apparently the only one who knew it. Haunted people didn't sit around having dinner like there was nothing wrong--if there was a ghost in the room, you acted like it! Or you were supposed to. Or--Sam wasn't even sure anymore. But something was amiss. His father hadn't had to point it out to him; it was that obvious.

His father hadn't pointed it out, Sam realized. He'd said nothing, because he wasn't in control here. Hector Felipe was, and stubbornly so.

Hector Felipe was in control of John Winchester, and he was loving it.

As Hector Felipe ushered everyone out of the dining room and down the hall--Andalusia and the girls would show Dean to his room, and he and "Mr. Winchester" would examine the room where Housekeeper Celeste, God rest her soul, had dropped dead--Sam chafed at the broad expanse of his gestures, his affected baritone. It wasn't right. That control belonged to his father. It wasn't right.

"What's got you, Sammy?" It's Dean, being half-guided, half-dragged by his new best friend, Liliana.

Sam huffed. That wasn't even a real sentence, and Sam definitely wasn't going to treat it like one. But then.

"Sam."

Sam looked up, and found Dean, disentangled from Liliana, intent on Sam. Listening to him. He found Dean, period.

"Sam, what's wrong."

But Sam couldn't have told him, could he. Dean'd already said he didn't want to know. And to begin to explain where things had gone wrong, Sam would have needed to start a lot earlier than someone else's fingers in his malasada. "I--" he said. But then the moment was gone, snatched up in a flurry of bedspreads and pillow shams, as Andalusia dumped them into Sam's arms and shepherded her flock of apparently lesser beings into the third room off the hall. Sam struggled with his unexpected burden and Dean slipped away, beyond a veil of purple silk and lace-fringed duvets.

 

\--

 

They're skilled, he'll give them that. Sam, perched on a wicker footstool a space away from the spectacle, frowned. They'd folded the comforter under Dean before bringing it up to his chest, a human hot dog; and Sam knew Dean liked that. They'd known, somehow, to stack the pillows on top of one another beneath him. All these things they'd known, things Sam had assumed were part of his inventory of Dean, and his alone. Dean was _his_ stupid brother, he reasoned, and he should get some credit for that. But somehow they'd known, or deduced. And they'd made Sam irrelevant.

Liliana slipped into Dean's human hot dog, curving her body along his back like a spoon, and stroked his arm. Then she kissed his brow.

Sam gagged. Not only was he irrelevant, he'd been upstaged entirely, because he definitely wasn't going to do that.

"Can I take your temperature, Dean?" She'd put on lipstick, Sam realized. It was 3AM, and inexplicably, she'd just now decided to put on lipstick. "In Mexico, I'm a nurse's apprentice."

"Do you speak Spanish?" Dean asked, and this time it was more of a dry-heave on Sam's part. Dean was exactly that degree of feverish, Sam determined, that made him oblivious to exactly how stupid he was.

Liliana broke character for a moment, falling back into fourteen-year old girl and out of Jessica Rabbit, as though she weren't entirely sure how to answer the question, or why it was being asked. "We speak Spanish in Mexico, yes," she said finally.

"What about Japanese?"

"They speak that in Japan."

"Obviously. I meant--"

Sam did not want to know what Dean meant; he was pretty sure of that. Thankfully, Andalusia emerged from the bathroom before Dean and Liliana could get any further. It was good to have a voice of reason in the room; and if it couldn't be Sam's, he figured Andalusia was a decent second choice.

"I soaked your towel in lavender water," said the voice of reason. The voice of reason had changed out of sweatpants and a camisole and into a sheer robe while she'd been preparing the towels. Sam had never seen a girl in a bra before. "Here, put this on your forehead. Is that good?"

Sam tried, he really had, to give the world the benefit of the doubt, but this was ridiculous. It had to be. There was no way on earth this was actually happening right now. He watched as Andalusia wrung out a small purple towel and folded it against Dean's brow. She ran her fingers through his hair, gently massaging the hairline. Her back was to Sam, so he couldn't see much, but he was fairly certain she didn't need to be leaning that far over Dean's face to do what she was doing.

"Let me sing you a song," Marina chimed in. Marina, Sam's age, he guessed, and Sam's height. Marina, who was silent at dinner, also. Marina, Sam's best shot at finding sanity in this house. Marina, gone to the dark side. 

Sam curled his fingers into the wicker below him. He was scuffing it brown, he realized, with the dirt from his shoes. But he didn't care. The world as he knew it was ending around him; the stupid wicker was the least of anyone's worries. 

He just didn't understand. He absolutely did not. A woman had died in his house, days before--a woman well-loved, as far as he could tell. There was a ghost roaming the halls. There was something, probably terrible, that had kept the ghost here. Yet Hector Felipe was more interested in his own machismo posturing. And worse, John was letting that happen. And the girls weren't afraid; they were so far from afraid, they were throwing themselves at Dean. At Dean! If there were any mystery Sam wanted to get to the bottom of, he'd definitely start there. The ghost, he figured, would evince itself sooner or later. Dean was another story.

Because there had to be something to this. And if one thing was true about Sam, he never walked away from a puzzle.

Sam stared, intently, from his perch on the wicker footstool. He was a scientist, observing the rituals of monsters: The girls first, in their shimmery pajamas and midnight make-up. 

They were adept with the tools of their trade. The cool, fluffy towels, Liliana's little glass thermometer, the hot water bottle. Marina had brought a tea set, with which she served them all seltzer water. (Though, Sam noted with some chagrin, she hadn't offered him any.) Sam realized, however, that their kisses were too giggly, their touches too frantic, to be honestly confident. They were messily romantic, trying to measure up to the magic standards set by famous movies even Sam had seen. But they were strange girls, and close observation only revealed that they were actually even stranger girls. Seeing them for what they really were didn't change that, even if it did lay to rest Sam's growing suspicion that they were some kind of siren, or succubus. But no, they were just girls; and in a lot of ways, that was worse. 

Sam pitched forward, and hastily caught his balance. The wicker footstool settled beneath him. He hadn't realized he'd been leaning in to the scene.

Observation summit, part two: The first thing Sam noticed about Dean was that he was obviously sick. And just as obviously, that this was repellant. Sam spent a decent portion of his life trying not to be sick, in between late nights doing recon in dank forests and jumping into municipal sewers, and summers spent nearly drowning in fetid lakes and nursing bites and scratches, scratches from things that have been places a lot nastier than the squirrels in Central Park--and even Sam was still cautious enough to stay well away from those. So if Dean started looking peaky, Sam was strictly hands-off. But Sam could see the appeal to the untutored. Maybe. There was an easy volatility to Dean's expressions, the flush to his cheeks a constant disruption of the surface tension. Dean could turn a glassy stare into something glittering, playfully fiendish, ravenous if he wanted to; and apparently, he did want to. He made everything look easy, open, like it was fair game to all comers. He made it look like he had nothing to hide. Like he could swallow you whole and make you whole inside of him. Sam watched Dean put his arms around Liliana like that. He watched Liliana's smile. And Sam wanted. He wanted desperately. He wanted the Dean his brother became around other people--people like Andalusia, and Liliana, and even Marina.

Dean dared Marina to try and pick a song he liked, if she was such a singer; he dared her like he wanted her to win. He wanted her to succeed. And when Marina started warbling a mostly recognizable--if heavily accented and somewhat lisping--"Knockin' on Heaven's Door," Sam burned with an almost murderous jealousy. It shouldn't be that easy to know Dean, so easy to impress him. Sam tried to remember the last time Dean had looked at him like that.

About twenty minutes ago, probably, Sam realized, which made his righteous disgust abate somewhat. But even that wasn't the same; for these girls, there weren't any real consequences. All they had to do was kiss him for a night. There wasn't anything real about this house, these sisters, their infatuation; it was all just fantasy. But truthfully, Sam wasn't sure if that were true, or if he just wanted it to be.

Because he couldn't speak to Dean without being afraid that Dean wouldn't listen. He would never--

"Tell me anything," Dean said to Liliana, his eyes closed, and his lips searching. "You can tell me anything, Robin." She giggle-whispered into his hair. Andalusia, forgetting her earlier professionalism as a host, whispered into Dean's other ear. Sam rolled his eyes. And what kind of a pet name was Robin? It was almost as sappy as calling someone "dove" or "snookums." Was it so wrong to just call her Lily or something? It had worked for Sam and Sammy, hadn't it?

But Sam was definitely not hypothesizing pet names for anyone; it just wasn't happening, no way, and no how. It was not happening. Also, pet names were dumb.

"Let's play telephone," Andalusia suggested, and the entire bed pulsed with the apparent genius of that prospect. Marina, who was not included in the game, asserted her continued participation in the festivities by singing even more loudly.

"There is a God," Dean mumbled, each word humming with contentment. "There's actually a freaking God," he said, to the girls this time, and not to Sam.

Sam was not a believer. No God he voted for would enable this ridiculous charade.

"THA'COOLBBLACKC'OUD S'COMIN' DOWN," Marina wailed. "IT FEEEELLIKE I'M KNOCKI'ON HEAVENSDOOR!"

Sam took a deep breath, and held tight to the thought: No God that he voted for.

"KNOCKOCKOCKIN ON HEAVENSSSDOOR!"

"She sang that at the funeral," said Luz.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam, Interpellated: Sam grows into his family. The problem is, his family never grew up, and it never moved on.

"She sang that at the funeral," said Luz, from behind Sam's wicker perch. Sam jumped; he'd--well, not forgotten, but he'd assumed Luz had dutifully gone to bed or something. He wasn't entirely thrilled to see her now, but she was different, at least. And given the status quo of the room just then, Sam was open to different.

"The funeral?" Sam asked.

"My mami is the Dean of Medicine at the Centro Médico ABC. She loves me!"

Sam groaned inwardly. He hated kids. They never made any sense; it was like they actually tried to not make sense. No one ever listened to Sam when he _made_ sense; infantile non sequiturs seemed like an unfair luxury. But whatever.

"Did she--" And you know, Sam thought, this was one thing he should have been really good at talking about. But he didn't have the vocabulary for this. "The funeral. Was it your mom's?"

"You can't work at a hospital if you're a ghost. You make people cold, and then they die faster." 

Sam shuddered involuntarily. He really hated kids. 

"Celeste told me that ghosts aren't real."

"That's nice," said Sam, trying to remember who Celeste was. Celeste, the housekeeper. Right. "Was it Celeste's funeral?"

Celeste's funeral was going to be on Thursday, Luz informed him. Obviously. "Mami's house in Lomas de Chapultepec is bigger, you know. Lily always says so."

Sam chuffed. Of course "Lily" did. From what Sam was able to piece together from the rest of Luz's rambling epic, her sisters spent a lot of time doing absolutely nothing in a ritzy-ass part of Mexico. Their mother moved back to her parents' mansion after she left Hector Felipe, and she'd never been back.

"A bad thing happened here," Luz confirmed. "God said, 'Covet not,' or a ghost will take your treasures away from you."

"Someone should tell that to your sisters." Sam shot a poisonous glance at the lavender bed. Liliana and Dean were kissing.

"God saw my papi giving Celeste a secret kiss," said Luz. "So He took her away."

Then she said, "I have a present," and produced a book. It was a Bible, but still, Sam was strangely touched. I was a present.

"It's for Dean."

Sam set his jaw and bit his tongue. He flipped to the first page. There, sticky and savory, was a heart that had been finger-painted with steak juice. "Thanks."

"For _Dean._ "

"I get it."

Sam got it. But if he wasn't wanted here, fine; he'd go find the ghost. He'd go find John. He was pretty sure that if John knew what Sam had overheard, what Sam knew about him and Uncle Bobby, and Veronica, and all of them, he was pretty sure he could drum up a lot of interest, real fast. He could solve his family and this stupid, stupid ghost-hunt, all in one fell swoop. He'd burn the world down if he had to.

Sam jumped off the wicker footstool with righteous muster. Luz had scattered already, so he dumped the Bible on his old perch and stormed towards the outer hall.

"Sam," Dean called after him. Which was surprising, because Dean had seemed thoroughly and very happily distracted from all things Sam, but it wasn't enough to get Sam to turn around. Not today. "Sammy. Sam, wait--"

 

Not today.

 

\--

 

The house was a beacon still, every light shining to perfection. Sam figured that at the very least it would be impossible to miss them flickering, the electric surge of a ghost coming home to roost. The complete solitude outside of the Dean Winchester room of lavender-scented horror was unnerving in refreshing in turns, and Sam hurried past the line of family portraits as he backtracked towards the front door, where John had left their duffel bag.

The duffel was absent their usual miscellany of spare clips and extra, emergency boxes of rock salt. The fifty dollar bill John kept sewn into the lining was gone. (Sam had discovered the money earlier that year; he'd returned it, however, self-conscious and inexplicably shamed.) The silver trinkets which, in a pinch, worked wonders against a lot of monsters wanting to kill you, were also missing. Even some of their secondary rifles weren't there, and these were things John didn't just loan out.

Sam selected a willowy piece of iron piping and pulled the EMF meter out of its newspaper nest. There was a film of dust between its knobs and switches, so much it looked like it had been striped white, and as he walked back down the hall, Sam wiped at it with the sleeve of his shirt. He could see the dirt they'd tracked into the hall, and he bowed his head until he'd left the portraits well behind.

But without the distraction of other people impressed upon him, Sam couldn't ignore the number he and his family had already wrought on this nice, clean haunted house. A dusty spot on the wall--had Sam leaned against it there? A lost napkin, brown and crumpled and wet. Boot tracks. Sam hadn't felt particularly dirty, but maybe he needed to reevaluate that.

Sam walked past Dean's room, almost willing the EMF to freak out and corroborate Sam's hopeful suspicions, but it was silent. But he didn't want to deal with the girls--Andalusia, and Liliana, and Marina, and Luz, Sam catalogued--and he certainly didn't want to deal with Dean.

Sam picked up the pace, swinging his iron pipe idly. Once, he twirled it too close to the wall, and left a screeching streak of blue-gray against the stucco. Rubbed out, it looked like a smoke stain. Sam gagged a little at the chalkiness of his mouth, and wet his fingers for one last good rub, to no avail.

He walked, sedate, iron pipe loose at his side, until he heard Hector Felipe's large baritone. And then he crept. At the end of the hall, there was a door, different from the rest, marked for the servant's quarters. Sam consulted his EMF meter, but the needle barely jumped. It only proved that at some point, for some duration, a ghost had been there. A little static was all that was left of Housekeeper Celeste and her icy frozen heart.

"That's a rich man's answer, Hector," John said, in answer to a blur of white noise Sam hadn't been able to decipher. He crept closer.

"Felipe," said Hector Felipe. "Hector Felipe to you, Mr. Winchester. You forget, I know your story. I know what you've done."

Then Hector Felipe told their story. The Winchester Family Business Story. Sam had never heard it from a stranger's mouth before--or anyone's mouth, really. And for Hector Felipe's, it didn't sound like Sam's story, as Sam knew it, and it didn't sound like his family--not his dad, not his brother. They weren't, and Sam wasn't. Sam wasn't like that. And that story didn't feel like something Sam could wrap his arms around and ever make a part of him. Yet Hector Felipe told no lies.

Sam squeezed his fingers around his iron pipe until he felt his nails dig into the flesh of his palm. He felt the tendons twist taut.

"How much have you sold to make it this far?" Hector Felipe asked John. "How much have you thrown away?"

He let John give his daughter a pauper's funeral. He watched her bones burn, and the salt turn turn flame green. He believed John when he promised that would end it; he'd seen the first ghost go, after all, and John had promised. "You promised me my angel would go to Heaven, Mr. Winchester, and I trusted you."

"I never said there was a Heaven," was John's only response.

"Is that why you sold your wedding rings?" asked Hector Felipe. "Because God isn't watching?" _I am a businessman, Mr. Winchester_ , he added. _This time I've remembered to research who I'm working with._

"They're only memories," John answered, in a strangled tone of voice Sam knew his father didn't use on anyone. Or thought he knew.

"I saw who killed Celeste, Mr. Winchester. I was here--I'll admit it--and I felt her lips go cold on mine. I felt the strength bleed out of her body. I felt the weight of her death. Memory is--very powerful, Mr. Winchester, and you of all people should remember that. So know this. This is your fault now, twice-over." 

Eight years, Hector Felipe mouthed. Eight years, he and his girls have tried to put their tragedies behind them. John's tragedies. Eight years and still, the ghosts come back. These were the ghosts that John Winchester promised he would end.

"You know it's true," Hector Felipe added, when John said nothing. "You know it's true, or you wouldn't be here, would you. Chasing after memories."

Sam had never heard an adult speak so hatefully, or with such a cast of betrayal. He'd never heard someone hurt like that. And he had never heard anyone hate his father. (But it's been happening a lot lately, hasn't it. Old partners wanting to collect on debts. Friends, overused and unrespected. John had a crusade he could not let go of, but also, increasingly, a crusade he could no longer afford to maintain.)

"A father provides, Mr. Winchester. And I honor my children. I loved my wife until you got our daughter killed, and she left this--haunted house. I loved Celeste until your loose ends killed her, too. Don't drag me down with you. If it's an ending you want, and peace you're really after, try _harder_."

Sam gasped. He hurt. For no reason, he thought, he hurt. Dizzy with the morbid success of his eavesdropping, Sam dropped his iron pipe, dropped the EMF meter and, running to escape the sound they made against the stone floor as much as from the attention he knew it would bring, streaked down the hallway. He ran as fast as he could.

_Who needs you more, John? Bobby shouted. A roar that buzzed in the telephone wires like some impossible beast. Who needs you more? The dead or your children?_

 

\--

 

"Sam, calm down." But Sam was not going to calm down, because being dragged out of a hallway by your brother, only to discover that he was half-naked (half! naked!) was really, really ridiculously far from a reason to calm down.

"WHAT WERE YOU DOING?" Sam cried, wresting himself away from Dean's grasp. "WHAT ARE YOU DOING."

Dean shrugged his T-shirt back over his shoulder, then did the same for the flannel. It did nothing, however, to hide the sag of his collar, which had been irreparably stretched. "Nothing!" Dean insisted obtusely, as he adjusted his belt and--oh god--zipped his jeans back up.

"WHAT WERE YOU DOING."

"Sam, nothing, really, seriously, cross my heart, I promise, I didn't do anything. Future reference? Never bring up the dead sister--total buzzkill."

_I promise._

"There are twins, by the way. Or there used to be," Dean clarified. 

Sam stared, mouth agape. His brother was just. So _weird._ And Sam felt like a bat that had been suddenly dragged into the daylight. 

(Don't think about the servant's quarters.)

Once Dean was dressed again, Sam tore his attention away from him long enough to realize that they were in a new room. There was no wicker in this one; just an undisturbed bed with an immaculate bedspread, which Dean was now sagging against. Sam could hear the muffled shrieks of an argument down the hall, in the old, lavender bedroom, sinusoidal Spanish crashing against the white stucco.

"Is that your fault?" Sam asked. 

Dean shrugged. "The point is, at one point in time, there were twins. And now there's not. Bam, ghost story." This last was a croak, Dean's cold (or whatever) having settled into his throat. He coughed into his elbow.

"Well, which one's the twin?" 

Dean shrugged again. Sam could tell Dean was totally cloud nine-ing this discussion. "Dean," he said, spreading his arms in invitation. "Come on, hello."

"The little one," Dean said finally, his eyes screwed shut. He took a deep breath. "The little one, your age, I don't know."

"Are you freaking serious?" Because one, Sam was definitely not "the little one." And two, not helpful. "Marina? Luz?"

"Who?"

Sam folded his arms in exasperation. An entire evening, and he didn't even know their names. "Honestly. What do they see in you?"

"I'm a good kisser." Dean puckered his lips and swept playfully toward Sam. Sam recoiled, and Dean pulled back, wobbly.

"I dunno, Sam," Dean continued, sobered. "The one that's little girl shaped; there's a lot of girls, how am I supposed to keep them straight?" Sam was about to ask again, in earnest, what they could possibly see in him, when Dean added, "She could sing. She could sing, and she had a twin. And Sam--"

Dean faded. He miscalculated his grab for Sam and, unsecured, crumpled to the ground. Sam dropped instantly, and tried to heave him back to sitting by his shoulders. But Dean wouldn't have any of that. He palmed the carpet and sucked in air. So instead, Sam put a reassuring hand to Dean's back--burning and sweaty, even from under his clothing.

"Does it...hurt?" Sam asked.

"Just dizzy." Supporting himself one-handed, he put the other out towards Sam, and found Sam's shoulder. He used Sam's body as his guide to getting upright. Once he succeeded, he knocked his head back against the large, unmussed bed. "Jus' _really--_

"This isn't good, Sammy."

"Dad'll cover," said Sam.

"Where's he been this whole time?" Dean asked without looking at Sam.

"He's just at the end of he hall. He's with Hector Felipe."

"Where's he _been_ this whole time?" Dean repeated. 

And that, Sam couldn't answer. But Sam had puzzled out one thing, he realized. Something about Dean. Because this, right here, was the Dean no one else would ever see. The version of himself he gave only to Sam, in guarded, frantic, confusing little pieces. Sam got to see Dean's weakness. He got to see Dean worried. He got to see him hurting. (But only sometimes.) All those others, Dean swallowed into a void. And Sam, Sam had the privilege of knowing that. 

Sam knew he should feel grateful, but mostly he felt sick. Some part of him knew that he was not exempt. Not entirely.

"We're working," Sam said finally. It was the only thing he could say. "Dad knows it's the girl, too. We just need to find her. Veronica said--"

Dean groaned. "What does Veronica have to do with anything?"

"You don't know that story," Sam reiterated, tersely. If they'd talked this out hours ago, it wouldn't be a problem right now. But it all made sense. John had worked a case here before. _You two got business,_ Veronica had said, gripping Sam's shoulders possessively. _You know you don't want your kids around there. Not after--_

 _I want my children with me,_ said John.

 _You've already failed them, John._ Then Veronica had let go of his shoulders, and Sam was rescued. Maybe.

_Don't drag them down with you._

"Veronica said Dad already worked a case here," Sam shorthanded. "A long time ago. And a little girl got killed, one of the daughters--Marina's twin, I guess." And love, which never, ever got less complicated when people started dropping dead, was what had made this ghost a killer. She turned hearts cold. Avenged lost romance. Burned for the love of the living. That sort of thing. Sam shrugged. Ghost stuff.

"So basically, Dad messed up," Dean rasped. He seemed to crumple inward, and pulled sullenly at his bootlaces. There was a pause then, a silent expanse of something stinging and open, and it made Sam itch all over. Then Dean rapped at his laces with his knuckles and said, at a clip, "Whatever. It's whatever. If you see a Marina-shaped ghost, shoot it."

But her body--that had burned already. This was supposed to have ended a long time ago. A long-- "Dean, wait. If Dad messed up here, that was years ago. Veronica said. But that means Marina's twin would have been--"

Just then, the entire wall slammed open, and on impulse, Dean threw a hand over Sam's mouth. But the wall had not, in fact, disintegrated; rather, the wall wasn't. It had been a partition only, separating a wide ballroom into many bedrooms, and Andalusia wrenched it open as she screamed at Liliana, without even stopping for breath. 

Liliana was screaming back, a flustered mixture of both English and Spanish to stave off Andalusia's verbal assault. Andalusia had hammered her own screams into a single repeated phrase: "YOU'RE NEVER TO SPEAK ABOUT HER. YOU WERE NEVER TO SPEAK ABOUT HER. NEVER SPEAK."

"No no no," Dean groaned. "Don't draw more _attention_ to her--"

The lights flickered, and everyone's screams cut out.

Dean was still finding his feet, and still smothering Sam, when Sam heard a noise under the bed.

A Bible eked out from beneath the bed skirt, clutched by small white hands. And from under the bed, Luz barked. Pretending she was a puppy again.

The lights danced like they'd been roused by an electric storm.

Sam sprang up immediately, the surge of adrenaline that propelled him also yanking Dean forward with enough force to make him yelp.

"I have a present," chimed Luz, opening her Bible to the first page, the one with the steak sauce heart. "A present for Dean."

If Dean didn't have the presence or agility of mind right then to cooperate with Sam, he did apparently find it necessary to shove him toward the door, his body a fortress between Sam and Luz.

"Dean, no, stop, you're doing this wrong--"

But then Luz looked at Dean, and she looked at Sam, and Luz smiled. "Sam," she said, closing her Bible. She tested his name again. "Dean loves Sam. And I love Sam like Dean does."

 

Sam had never wanted so desperately to be loved different.

 

\--

 

"It's Luz," said Sam, pushing back against Dean. But Dean had backed them to the hallway, and bracing himself in the doorway, had boxed Sam out.

"How can you tell?" Dean croaked.

It was then Sam realized that Dean couldn't see her. He craned his neck to find Andalusia and Liliana, who'd gone silent. But they were looking at Sam and Dean, not Luz. It was just Sam, then. 

"Can't you see her?" he cried. But they shook their heads. But why couldn't they? She was so obvious, she was right there in front of all of them, she didn't even look like a ghost at all, but a person, a flesh and blood person.

Sam had shared his dinner with her.

"Papi told us not to," Liliana said finally. "He said she was forbidden. He said--"

Then something grabbed Sam from behind. Coarse and heavy, it slammed a gag against Sam's mouth and yanked his fingers away from the back of Dean's shirt. Sam felt his arms fold against his ribs, crushing the air from him. He spit against his gag--a hand--with a plosive gasp.

Luz jumped toward them. Somewhere above his head, Sam heard his father shout, "Down, Dean!" Dean swooped under Luz and then Sam lost perspective as he was wrenched sideways. He report of a shotgun deafened him, and he cringed as he was peppered by the blowback of rock salt. 

He was in his father's arms, Sam realized. He was in his arms and John was holding him too tight. Sideways now, he opened his eyes and made out, his vision blurred by tears, the salt line John was trying to spill across the doorway. Luz swept toward them for a second charge, and John spun left. Sam, in his arms, smashed headlong into Luz's portrait in the hall. John shielded Sam from who knew what, but he felt the icy chill of a spirit passing over him. Then John flung Sam down the hall, away from the ghost, and Sam hit the ground unprepared, a jarring smack that kept him down, dazed, skeleton ringing, muscles puddling, for too long. Sam froze, and choked on his own spit. He gaped like a fish. All he could think about was pain. He stared.

John had replaced him in his arms with a bag of rock salt. He was trying to seal off Luz's escape routes. John had replaced him.

Then Sam remembered Dean, still on the other side of John's salt line. He rolled onto his knees and, after a shaky false start, worked up to a shamble and hobbled down the hall. The rooms were connected, he thought blearily. He'd go around. He'd go around and he'd get inside that way. He'd get to Dean.

Behind him, he heard someone shout his name. His father, maybe. Sam kept shambling.

He made it around just in time for Andalusia to sweep toward him from the other direction, dragging Liliana by her side. They rushed into Hector Felipe's arms. Hector Felipe, dumbstruck, regarded Sam hazily, but mostly clutched the partition wall so tightly it bent, mouth agape.

"Luz," he breathed.

Luz had Dean's cheeks cupped in her pudgy hands, and he was kissing him on the nose. Dean, rigid but helpless under her, pulled backward in vain. Then he seemed to give in, and just let it happen. Luz wrapped her arms around his neck.

"Papi, where's Marina?" Sam heard Andalusia ask, panicked, but Hector Felipe did not respond. To Sam, she barely registered. The frenzied seconds seemed to freeze, and Sam watched Dean. He watched Dean go limp under Luz, and his fist closed around the memory of his iron pipe, dropped and forgotten.

Then his mind caught up with reality and Sam realized he was being jerked backwards again, John had grabbed him backwards again, and Sam screamed, "No!" Over and over, he screamed. And he tried to escape. Get back, John roared over him. Get back. Get safe.

"I borrowed your string." 

Sam stopped. It was Marina, somewhere below him. It was Marina, under the bed.

Luz looked up from Dean.

"I stole your yellow ribbon, but I only borrowed the string," Marina clarified. "It's right here under the bed, look."

Luz let Dean slide from her hands. He lay beneath her unmoving for a few scanty seconds. Sam went limp with relief when Dean wormed away from her.

Marina crawled out from under the bed, and sobbed something in Spanish. She held her hands open for her sister. And Liliana, taking Marina's cue, said, "Dinner was ready. That's when I meant to tell you, when I found you. Dinner was ready. Your third favorite thing."

"Hi," said Andalusia. "Hi, baby."

"My light," said Hector Felipe.

They had nothing to say to her, Sam thought. She'd died and they'd spent all this time missing the fact that they had nothing to say to her. Just silly little things. Silly little things that still needed to be said. Silly things that just meant they needed her. They needed her to be there with them. 

The lights flickered madly.

Hector Felipe dropped his death grip on the partition wall and stumbled towards his daughter's ghost. But before their forms met, she was gone. Sam watched her evaporate, a white missed swirling upward, and he knew she was gone for good--as though she'd never been. He felt it in the air. She was gone. Luz was gone.

Marina gasped. Hector Felipe moaned. John let go of Sam, and across the room, Dean shored up. With one shoulder slumped against the wall, he looked up at John. Sam watched him nod shakily, in response to some cue from John Sam had missed. _I'm fine,_ said Dean's nod. _It's all good. I'm fine._ Then he rounded the doorframe and disappeared into the hallway.

Sam winnowed his way through the mess of people stunned into immobility and hastened into the hall as well.

The lights shone bright again.

Their work was done.

 

\--

 

Dean took one look at Sam and dropped. He'd gotten away, stood up, escaped, he'd done all of those things--but he saw Sam and he stopped trying to pretend. He dropped. Sam yelped, and rushed to close the distance between them, all too aware of the massive bruise his entire left was fast becoming. He winced and blinked back tears as he slid to Dean's side.

"Dean!"

Dean didn't seem to hear him. His gaze was fixed on the ground, unresponsive to any of Sam's ministrations. He was cold to Sam's touch, where he'd been too hot just moments before. "Dean, come on. Dean."

Sam closed a hand over Dean's. His didn't fit all the way around, but he gripped tight anyway "Dean, come on, talk to me. Hey."

But there was nothing. There was a vacancy

"Dean, please, it's Sam, come on."

"Dean, please."

Sam thought about how far away Dean had been, for months. How far he'd been in the car, in this house, even in his stupid hallway. And he knew that whatever that meant, or whatever that looked like later, he'd take it. He'd take whatever part of Dean he got.

"Dean, please."

It would have to be good enough. Sam'd take what he could get, because he couldn't afford to lose it.

"Dean--"

Then Dean's cheeks puffed out, and his white face blanched positively luminescent, and Sam got the hell out of the way as Dean threw up dinner onto the stone floor, grinding rock salt into his palms and puffing their dirt tracks into the grout cracks with his heaving breaths.

When Dean was done, Sam knelt beside him again. He took a deep breath, and let his body puddle on the floor beside Dean.

And without a word, he removed his flannel button-up and started mopping up.

"It was dirty anyway," Sam assured his brother, even though he was pretty sure Dean wasn't exactly up to giving a crap. But Sam cared. "It's okay. It's okay."

Dean mumbled something incomprehensible, and enveloped Sam's free hand in his own.

"What?

"What, Dean?"

 

\--

 

At noon, some hours after the house had reawoken, Sam met up with Dean in the lavender room. Dean was alone, shoving his boots back onto his feet while he sat on Sam's wicker footstool. He looked absurdly out of place that way, covering the area where Sam had smudged the wicker black with an even greater smudge. And he stood out, stretched shirt and worn jeans against the tender framework of the furniture, and the white lace that dressed the table beside him.

"How're you feeling?" Sam asked. Dean looked better, but still scattered. Fragmented. He muffled a gluey cough with his elbow, but to Sam it wasn't a particularly interesting symptom. Sick happened. (And ghosts also happened. But Sam wasn't quite willing to accept that. Not anymore.)

"Andalusia slipped me some pills. Fucking miracle workers," Dean replied, as though he'd forgotten the ghosts. But Sam remembered Dean's hollowness for that one moment, how completely unreachable he'd been in the hallway. Sam remembered those seconds, whether Dean wanted him to or not. And for Sam, these things weren't allowed to simply disappear. To evaporate out.

"Luz," Sam started.

Dean shook his head, and without waiting for Sam to elaborate, announced, "She wasn't out for a vengeance. She was just--she was like us. She didn't know how to stop."

Sam shifted in his sneakers.

"I mean, like, we love people. Like--we love Mom, even though she's gone and it hurts. Who's to say ghosts don't do the same thing right back? She kept going and it just--it got all fucked up, and she couldn't stop. She just--"

Sam nodded, as though he understood. But he didn't, not entirely. Whatever Dean thought Sam shared with him, Sam knew they didn't, not in that way. But Dean wasn't really talking to him anymore. He talking _at_ Sam, sure, but this was just Dean talking to Dean, with Sam blocked out. With Sam on the other side of a void.

"How come you didn't know it was her?" Sam asked. "You had to have known the twin was Luz. Everyone had to have known."

"No one else saw her, Sam. I guess dead chicks just dig you, I dunno what to tell you."

"But her picture was hanging right there. I don't understand--"

"What picture?"

Sam just looked at Dean expectantly; no, he looked at Dean like he was a complete stranger. There were so many things that just-- Everyone had so many missing pieces to their stories. And now that Sam knew how likely it was, against all odds, that the missing ones were always going to be the crucial ones, he was seized by an unshakable, harrowing uncertainty. A portrait one day, a skewed promise the next; it was just--it was only matter of time, was how Sam felt. And these were such simple, little things.

Sam bit his lip. "Where's the...harem?" he asked, testing the word, and wary now of every absence. It didn't feel right to be alone inside this house.

"Going Pet Sematary on the backyard." Dean finished tying his laces. "Don't understand why they'd want to her back, though. Kinda fucked up, right? I mean, she's gone. 

"She's _gone."_

Dean looked far away again. He wasn't making any sense.

"You're weird," Sam pointed out, "You're really weird. And I still missed you."

Dean rolled his eyes. "Oh, don't start with that. C'mon--" He broke off, to cough, and grabbed Sam by the shoulder as he heaved himself to standing. Sam stiffened at the touch, a sudden thrill of warning echoing through his body, but he tried to relax it away before Dean noticed. This was not last night. There was no danger here.

In the hallway, Sam tried, for the fourth time in twelve hours, to tell his story. "Uncle Bobby said--"

Dean's rebuke was instant. "It wasn't like that." Whether Dean knew what 'like that' even was, he pushed forward doggedly. "I ran away."

Sam squirmed. He felt like he was sliding away from his skin. "And you left me?"

They passed under the portraits, countenances unchanged by Luz's departure. Dean paid them exactly as much attention as he had all the other times they'd walked this path. The house remained sunny, bright, and haunted.

Dean let the silence run too long. Then he hid inside a series of coughs. Finally: "Well, what'd Dad tell you?" 

"A 'hunt.'" 

Dean grappled with this for a half-step before responding. "Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Went off with some of Dad's guys from the colony, ended up finding a hunt. And there were zombies. Sorry, Sammy, but c'mon, there were _zombies_."

"That doesn't make any--"

Dean yanked the door open, and let the real sunlight in. He coughed, and pawed at his pockets like he was looking for another napkin.

"Look. You're smart, Sam; I'm not gonna spell this out for you. There was a hunt. I left. Figure it out from there, jesus."

Sam burned. Sam wanted. 

And then Sam gave in. Sam dropped his gaze to the floor and tried to push past Dean. He'd almost cleared the threshold when Dean brushed an exploratory hand across the back of Sam's head. He must have noticed the bump. 

Sam winced. He should explain, he knew, but Sam didn't want to. He was afraid of opening that void. He didn't want to luxuriate in the feeling of being lied to, of things not adding up, of safeties hastily and wrongfully defined. He was afraid of being afraid of his father, even if only for that crazy, upside-down instant. He was afraid of wondering what John wasn't doing, or could not do. And he was afraid of giving this, all of this, to Dean.

Dean's fingers caught on the raised scabs on Sam's cheek from the rock salt, and his expression darkened. But Sam said nothing.

"He just wanted you safe," Dean said.

"I didn't need saving."

Sam thought about Dean on the other side of John's salt line, but Dean didn't say anything else.

 

As they neared the Impala, both Hector Felipe and John looked up.

"Three," said John, closing the conversation off from his children with a turn of his shoulder. "He was good for the job. Like I said."

"Two," said Hector Felipe, insistent. There remained no love between them.

And two, John accepted. Something exchanged hands, and John swept around to the driver's side door. Wiping his hands, Hector Felipe excused himself. As he passed Sam and Dean, he said "Safe travels," in that broad, expansive way of his, which made Sam feel very small.

"I don't like that guy," Dean confided to Sam in a heated whisper. "He's never real."

But Sam knew. If there were a "real Dean"--or even a "real Sam"--they were people Sam had never met.

They parted at the car, Dean in front and Sam in back. Before he opened his door, Dean clapped Sam on the shoulder. "Hey," he said. "Good job last night." Then he coughed, a cough on a cough on a cough like his sneezes, and disappeared into the Impala. End of story.

Sam followed.

 

\--

 

The gas tank was filled to bursting, needle stretching up and over the "F" on the dash. It had been paid for with crisp, clean bills John wouldn't let Dean touch. John hadn't said much, no one had, but at some point he'd taken the time to order a sweatshirt on Dean. And when the waitress at the restaurant finally came, John ordered a pitcher of water, no ice. It was, it seemed, Dean's filial duty to drink all of it. You need to hydrate, John explained. And so here they were, looking shamefully ridiculous and sweatshirted and waterlogged and pretending not to be haunted all over again. Sam squirmed.

The restaurant had cloth napkins and stone coasters. Dean's sweatshirt named him a Top 20 Finisher in the 1988 Cincinnati "Mommy Madness" Fun Run (unlikely). At the booth across from theirs, a little girl was playing with her father's cufflinks. Remembering Luz, Sam put his napkin in his lap, and was glad to see that there was only one spoon, one fork, and a steak knife wrapped inside it.

Then John told them they could order anything on the menu.

Sam felt a flush creep up his neck, sear his ears and raze across his cheeks. Anything. They could have anything. He felt a sudden, impulsive urge to order _every_ thing, the steaks, the shrimp platter, the Heart Healthy salmon, the artichoke dip smoked mackerel appetizer, just to see what his father would say. What he'd do. But at the same time, the idea was sickening; the idea, suddenly, of ordering anything at all was sickening; and his stomach sank, and twisted under the pressure of choice. It felt presumptuous to want. It felt like viscous, buttery guilt, hardening against the rim of plates Sam had not yet been served, collecting at the edges of his mouth after bites he'd not yet taken. And at the back of Sam's mind, he was pretty sure that "choose anything" actually meant "choose the right thing."

It felt presumptuous to want anything but the right thing. Whatever that was.

"What are you getting, Dad?" Sam asked.

John ignored him, as though Sam hadn't said anything at all.

Anything on the menu.

Sam bit his lip. His eyes raced across the pages before him, triple-columned and double-sided. He looked to Dean for help, for any kind of hint, but Dean was busy. Sam watched his brother let a single drop of water slip from the bottom of his straw onto his straw sleeve, watched it stretch out as it absorbed the drop, elongating like a worm. Dean himself, newly hydrated, looked worse than when they'd started. Nauseated and probably just as water-bloated as his straw sleeve. He was nervous too, Sam could see; illness always made him edgy, in the end. When he remembered to be afraid of all the things that illness dulled, or slushed. But edgy was a world apart from panic. And this was panic. _Help me, Dean._

Sam willed him from across the table, _please, please look up. Please help me,_ but Dean never did.

Sam took a long sip of his own water--unpleasantly lemony--and flipped backwards through the menu. It was like he'd forgotten how to read; nothing sounded real. If only Sam were psychic, it would solve everything.

In the end, Dean asked for tomato rice soup. Sam wanted a side salad. It was the cheapest thing he could find. 

John ordered nothing, said nothing, and in the wake of their waitress's departure John's nothingness hit Sam like a high wind. He sat up straighter, arranged his cutlery and his water glass and the coasters as though they were a rifle in pieces before him. His father's obvious disappointment hung heavy over the table, and Sam tried his best to stay out of its way. He breathed lightly. He kept his eyes on the table grain immediately in front of him: It wasn't even real wood. Sam could see the smudges of other people's fingerprints marring the lacquered veneer.

Sam wasn't even sure who got it more wrong. Dean maybe, because seriously? Tomato soup? Gross. 

Sam hazarded a glance at his father, only to be met with an unreadable expression, laced with dismay and Sam-didn't-even-know-what. (Regret, he thought at first. It was regret. But the idea just made him study the table even harder. Their father's regrets were off-limits.) 

"Anything you wanted, Sam," John said finally. He sighed. "I told you-- I wanted you to be able to have--" Then he stopped. "Dean," he said, and stopped again.

And that was that.

After a while, someone slid a small salad in a wooden bowl in front of Sam's face. It smelled like tomato soup, which meant it smelled like nothing. Sam waited , without looking up, for Dean to take his first tentative slurp. When the act stirred nothing in John, Sam gave his salad a curt nod. He dug his nails into his thighs, just above the knee, and steeled himself for the ordeal of now having to eat it. 

Sam was starving, but he wasn't hungry at all. He felt betrayed; it was just a stupid salad. It was just a stupid salad. It wasn't his fault.

A lump gathered at his throat. The ghost of a hand scraped across it.

"Dad," Dean started.

"Where'd you get the money?" finished Sam.

In answer, John tipped a crisp fifty dollar bill onto the middle of the table; it's time to go, he said. Now.

For a frantic moment, Sam thought, he hadn't finished. He hadn't finished, and they always had to finish, because otherwise it was a waste, and he had to finish, at some point in the next seven seconds, salad, down the hatch, it had to happen. Dean seemed to have swirled through a similar mental relay, because he put his bowl to his lips and quaffed. Sam wondered how hot the soup was. 

"Dad--" Sam eked out, as John slid him from the booth. "I--"

 

"A father provides."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title is borrowed from Lisel Mueller's poem, "Love Like Salt":
> 
>  
> 
> It lies in our hands in crystals  
> too intricate to decipher
> 
>  
> 
> It goes into the skillet  
> without being given a second thought
> 
>  
> 
> It spills on the floor so fine  
> we step all over it
> 
>  
> 
> We carry a pinch behind each eyeball
> 
>  
> 
> It breaks out on our foreheads
> 
>  
> 
> We store it inside our bodies  
> in secret wineskins
> 
>  
> 
> At supper, we pass it around the table  
> talking of holidays and the sea.


End file.
